This sermon emphasizes the powerful message of being raised from the dead spiritually, drawing from Ephesians 2 to highlight how God's mercy and love can transform lives. It shares stories of individuals who experienced resurrection from despair and sin, illustrating the life-changing power of encountering Jesus. The speaker calls for a response to invite Christ into one's heart, offering a new life and hope through faith and the Holy Spirit.

Raised from the dead. That's my message. Raised from the dead. Go to Ephesians, the second chapter. Read six verses. Ephesians, if you don't have your Bible, just hear the word if you will. And you has he quickened another raised who were dead in your trespasses and sins. In the time past, you walked according to the course of this world. In other words, you followed the crowd. And according to the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that now works in children of disobedience. In other words, you just followed the crowd no matter where it led you. Among whom also we all had our conversation or our lifestyle in times past in the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And by nature, we're children of wrath, even as others. But God who is rich in mercy. And I want you to hear this. If you sit here this morning, you walked in here and you wanted to hear something from God. You didn't want to go just to another church service. You wanted something to go deep inside your heart. And maybe you even wanted to change and listen to scripture. But God who is rich in mercy for his great love by which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, he's quickened to raised us together with Christ. By grace, you're saved. And he's raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. My God, let the words of my mouth, what I speak come from the throne of God, touch my lips and give ears to hear what the spirit of God is saying. Lord, this is one of the most important meetings I think we've ever had in this church because of the times and because of many, many that are coming from all over the city and around the world and they're searching and they're seeking. So Lord, it could not be a better time and more appropriate time for you to change lives than in this service today. I pray we humble ourselves to receive you in Christ's name. Now as Christians, we believe that when we die, we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. First of all, on Easter, we sing he arose from the grave victorious over his foes and he reigns forever with the saints. We believe that that Christ rose from the dead. He was resurrected. The Holy Spirit went right into the tomb, raised him up. We as Christians also believe that we will be resurrected when Jesus comes again. He said we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye. We're going to be raised off this earth into his presence with incorruptible bodies. It's all going to change. In second Corinthians, Paul speaks of a God who raises, his God raises the dead. This was his testimony. God raises the dead. Now folks, I'm going to tell you now there are a number, and I say it kindly, a number of dead people here. Dead in trespasses and sins, having no real life. You see, resurrection is from the Holy Spirit. God sent the Holy Spirit. He said, I'll not leave you comfortless. When Jesus went to heaven, he said, I'm not going to leave you comfortless. I'm going to send the Holy Ghost to live in you. And he is the giver or the one who brings this resurrection power to raise us out of the deadness. Now, you may be offended when I say when you're living in sin, you dead. It eventually brings you to death. I'm not talking about a physical death. This is metaphorical, but it's, you've become, eventually you become lifeless. You become bored with the sins, the deeper you go. And the scripture says, but we have a sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. Paul, the apostle said, he's delivered me from a great death. And he keeps delivering me. And who will yet deliver me in the future? There's a story behind what Paul is saying. Paul went to Ephesus where they were worshiping the goddess Deanna. And the silversmiths were making fortunes, selling little replicas of the goddess Deanna. And here comes Paul on the scene. And he cries out, your God is not really a God. That's a false God. There is only one God and his son all lived and died on this earth. The merchants stirred up the mobs and they took Paul the apostle and they bound him and were going to kill him. And Paul thought it was all over. And he wrote these words at that particular time. We were pushed out of measure, above strength in so much that we despaired of life. And we had the sentence of death in ourselves. And he said, I judged myself as being dead. There's no way out of this. I wonder on those who are listening to me now, how many of you have known this weighed down beyond your power, beyond strength, despairing of life. But when Paul says I despair of life, there's a sentence of death. And now God came on the scene and delivered him. And when he got his deliverance, he's writing to the Ephesian church and he says, I was resurrected from the dead. He took me out of a grave. I was dead. I stared the hell in the face and death in the face and God redeemed me. God resurrected me. We can believe and I believe with everything in me that there is a resurrection power today, that the resurrection, there is a final resurrection, but Paul is not speaking only of the final resurrection. He's talking about what God does here on earth now. I believe in resurrection of the here and now. What is it? When God, by his spirit, goes out on the streets, and that has happened hundreds and hundreds of times in this church and churches that preach Christ all over the world. An alcoholic that's laying on the street and somebody says, you know, the church two blocks away. He walks, staggers in, and he hears truth about the love of Jesus Christ and the mercy of God for sinners. That no matter what you've done, no matter what you've committed, no matter how deep you're into it, there's a Savior who saves and gives you a new life when old things pass away and all things become new. What is it? That's resurrection from the dead. That is resurrection from the grave. What is it when a pastor who emails me, and he said, Pastor Dave, I quit the ministry, and I left my church because I didn't see any results. And he said, I quit the ministry, and I fell into deep sin. And he said, I went so deep in sin, and my wife left me and my children. I lost everything and had nothing to my name left. He said, I was dead, dead in my trespasses and sin. And he writes to me, and he said, I gave up. And folk, what he's saying, I had that sentence of death on me. And he said, one day in my despair and my darkness, I just got down on my knees. And I said, oh God, I've sinned against you. I've grieved the Holy Spirit. Is there any hope for me? And a tear came, then another, and the Lord restored him. The Holy Spirit came. And folks, God healed him. He'd been away from his wife for two years, I believe it was. And he got up off his knees, and he said, I'm not going to try to scam my wife anymore. I've got to change. And for those two years, he began to worship the Lord, and he was a changed man. And one day, his wife called, and she said, I miss Jesus. Can I come back? And he said, look, they're now working with our Ministry and Teen Challenge in California. What is it? Another email. Now folks, I'm not preaching to saints. If you're a saint, rest. I'm on a life and death mission. There's no condemnation. But I'm telling you, there are some here that need to hear this. You're not here by accident. I don't know how you got here. You may come from another country. You're a tourist, and you're sitting here. Nobody's going to rail at you. And I have the Spirit of the Living God on me. God's been telling me all week, as I pray, that still small voice that there would be many in this church. I don't know how someone invited you, and you're sitting here now. Here's a young man who mails me. He said, Pastor Dave, I was about to kill myself. I had a gun to my head because I lost everything. I lost my job. I lost everything. There was no hope. I've tried every sin. I've tried every possible way to find peace in God. And he said, that's enough. And he took his pistol, and this is not a month or two ago. He said, I put it to my head, and I said my last prayer, God, if you love me, if you're real, you better stop me or I'm dead. And a little still small voice said, go to your mailbox. He put the gun down. He went to the mailbox, and there was a package. Somebody had sent him my book, Cross and Switchblade. He sat down, read the whole thing, started weeping, and said, God, if you can save Nikki Cruz and Maumau Gangley, you can save me. And that boy is on fire for God. What is that but resurrection from the dead? This is not some great homiletical sermon. I think sometimes we've been sermonized. We're just sermon tasters to see what new thing we can hear. But I'm just talking to you as a father and a grandfather and one who's preached for over 55 years. You did not walk in here by accident. There was a divine appointment. God put you in your seat right now. And you can look around you to the front of you. You can look to backs behind you and to the side of you. And you're going to find people. People that are here, you don't know them. We've over 100 nationalities that worship here now, over 100. And somebody sitting right in front of you had been delivered from sin. People all around you had their marriages healed. They were anticipating and planning divorce. Some were divorced and got back together again through the power of resurrection. How many in this audience have had a resurrection of your marriage through the power of Jesus Christ? Raise your hand. God has resurrected. Yes. All through. Some of you are sitting against a young lady who testified in this church recently. She had spent her nights dancing away at Roseland, next block, dancing the night away. And one day she walked into this church, and I don't know where she sat, and I presume she's here. And I can tell her story because she already told it, I think, last week. I don't know the whole story, but I just know that she spent, what was it, 10 years or so, dancing the night away and trying to find peace. Walked in here, evidently empty and searching and seeking. And I was preaching. I don't know what I preached, but she thought I was a psychic. He's reading my mind. Walked down the aisle and gave her life to Christ. What a testimony she is for the Lord. Ephesians 2, 1, and you has he raised up who were dead in trespasses and sins. You walked in the lust of your flesh. You fulfilled the desires of your flesh and mind. By nature, you were children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, and his great love were with he loved us. Even when we were dead in sin, he has raised us up together with Christ and made us sit together in heavenly places. Beloved, this is about getting a new life. This is not about religion. You can find religion anywhere. And religious organizations are springing up everywhere. And it's homemade religions. Religions after their own concepts. You can walk into churches where there is no life. I'm not condemning any church. You can go to any church, as dead as it may be, and no life there. You'll find seekers there. You'll find hungry hearts. So without condemning any religion, this is an interdenominational church. And it's one purpose, one purpose now in these days of shaking when everything that can be shaken is being shaken. And there's fear and there's anxiety on every side. Jesus is reaching out. Christ is reaching out by his Holy Spirit to the streets more than ever here in New York City. There's hustle, there's bustle. The CEOs are making their deals. Merchants are selling their wares. And it doesn't look like there's anything but order. Everything looks fine. And yet the cry that comes from the boardrooms, from Wall Street, from the bars is, is this all there is to it? Is this the only thing there is? Is this life? Because you see, there's something inside that God has planted in us, a need for him. And we don't have that. There's an emptiness. There's a hole. There's something there that makes life immensely miserable. This is why so many go to alcohol. This is why so many go to the fun drugs, as they call them. I know that I know that in the overflow room and all of the overflow rooms in here and in the balcony, God wants to raise you from the life you've been living. He said, in Christ Jesus, all things become new. Old things pass away and all things become new. God said, you did not choose me, but I chose you. Scripture in Ephesians 4, 18, 23, do not go the way of some who've alienated themselves from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of the heart. They're now past feeling. In other words, they're so given over to the world of pleasure, they're past feelings. What a horrible place to be that don't have any feelings for God. Past feeling, and yet God's mercy reaches out to those. They're past feeling, giving themselves over to their lusts. Put it all away and be raised up in the spirit of your mind. In other words, the Lord said, you can be resurrected, you can be changed, you can come into a new life. This is one of the simplest messages I have preached and probably will ever preach, but I want you to know that you can't get away from the Holy Spirit once he has you on his radar. The Lord has been not chasing you, but wooing you. Many of you came here maybe wanting to hear a prophetic message. I'm not a prophet, but a watchman, and I've made numbers of prophetic, given a number of prophetic messages. But I know that I was told by the Holy Spirit that he had prepared hearts, that he often moves heaven and earth in his sovereignty just to get to one soul, to one seeking heart. I believe in divine appointments. I believe that God arranges services like this, even the songs. Now, when I asked my subject here, raised from the dead, and you saw everybody clapping and getting happy, you thought you were in a cult. No, this is not a cult. We are ordinary people. This church is now 22 years old, and thousands and thousands have come through these doors and gone to nation after nation, lives that are changed. But today is a special day because you're here. I'm thinking of a divine appointment, a young girl from the gangs here in New York. I don't remember the gang she was in, but she was on heroin and a prostitute to support her habit. Someone asked her to come to my meeting, and she was sitting in the balcony. It was not in this auditorium, and Cookie had never cried in her life. She was so hard and so bitter, never cried. She tried, but couldn't. But there was such a hardness and an emptiness. She came to the meeting, and I remember the meeting that halfway through my message, a number of young people were being stirred by the Holy Spirit, and to the right and left, according to her testimony, those all around her were crying. There were tears, and she tried to make them come. Nothing would come, and she cried out, oh, please, God, make me cry. If you make me cry, I'll give you my life. One tear, then another, and then a river. Does anybody know what happened to Cookie Rodriguez? She went on to develop homes for girls, for drug-addicted prostitutes. She wrote the book, Please Make Me Cry, and I talked to her last week, and she's preaching all through Texas now, on fire for God, the divine appointment. I'm not going to preach long. I'm saying that time is getting short, and the Lord is doing wonders. You're going to hear this afternoon what God is doing in Iraq. It's an amazing thing that God's doing. He is saving hundreds of thousands of Muslims, and you say, Pastor Dave, what do you mean by being saved? First of all, you have to acknowledge you're a sinner. You have to acknowledge, I need help. You see, there's nothing holding you back from a new life but pride, and friends who would mock you and ridicule you. There's nothing in the world that's stopping you from receiving what hundreds of thousands of Muslims are receiving, a new revelation of Jesus Christ, and something that is from the heart and not the head, and that Christ becomes real, not just a movie, not just a picture, but that he abides, and he changes, and the Holy Spirit is with you right now in your seat, right where you are, and I'm not going to plead with you. I'm not going to beg you, but I'm going to offer you new hope, a new life, and resurrection from the dead. We just heard last week what God is doing in China, and now in Siberia. They tried to close the churches in China, and God moved by a spirit and saved millions, even though they closed the church doors. We prayed Thursday night for Siberia. We support ministries, ministries, ministry in Siberia, this church, and our organization World Challenge, and the government there is attempting, at least their resolution is coming forth to shut evangelical churches, but I tell you what's going to happen. It's just going to spread the gospel further and faster. More thousands and thousands are going to come to Christ, but amazing things happening with this. I close amazing things happening here in New York City. Everybody's asking, especially if they see that you have a smile on your face, and that you're getting along with your co-workers, and they sense that people, there's a Holy Ghost eminence. There's something that flows out, people filled with the Holy Spirit. It should, but there's a hunger, and there's a thirst, and I believe that he's going to do that here and now. I'm going to pray. I'm going to ask the congregation just a few moments to stand, and in the overflow rooms, in the annexes, those who are watching by screen, I see some already beginning to stand. It's all right. Anxious to make it right with God. If you feel this tugging inside, I've been preaching for 55 years, 22 years in this church, and I have never felt as an important meeting as this. I don't know who's here, but I know God wants to do a miracle, and something incredible is going to happen here in just a moment. I'm going to ask you to stand, and in the balcony, and in the overflow rooms. I don't want anyone, will you listen closely to me? This has been a short message, but I've given you my heart, what I heard from the Lord. If you want to give your life to Christ, I'm making a naked, bold invitation to you. No psychology, nobody's screaming, but in the quiet dealings of the Holy Spirit, and you've come to this church, and this is a life and death moment for you. We invite you to get out of your seat. See, the Bible, Jesus said, come to me, come. That means you humble yourself and say, I have to have a change. I have to have Christ, and some of you have drifted so far away and gone so deep in sin, and the Lord has heard you. God put you in this seat. He put this message on my heart, made it simple and clear, so there's no mistake about it, so that any child could understand it, and now he's speaking by his Spirit through my lips. He's inviting you. You don't join this church. We don't have a membership. You come because you want to meet God. You don't join anything, and we will pray for you, and we will believe God for a miracle. Up in the balcony, go to the stairs on either side, and here in the main auditorium, you just, nobody will think about, because you see, that's a joy to this congregation when we see people come to Christ, and those those who, as I pray, just make your way through the seats. People will back away for you, husbands and wives, those who have been running from God, and in the annexes, go to the lobby. I'm asking you to come down. I want the ushers there to show you how to get stairs and come right down any aisle. I want to pray for you right here at the front. Jesus said, if you're ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of you before the Father, but if you confess me before men, I'll confess you before my Father. Now, you don't have to come down here. You can do this in your seat right where you're at. You can invite Christ into your heart. You can be made a new creation right where you stand through confession of sin. He said, confess your sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't need anyone else to confess your sins to. You go directly to Jesus, and you whisper it. Just whisper it. You can even think this prayer because He's a mind reader. He reads our thoughts. I want you, while they're coming down from upstairs, will you just sing a song, and we'll wait until those that are coming down from above. Just move in closer, if you will, please. Now, you that have come forward, I would presume that many of you have been through this before. Maybe you've turned back, but I also perceive there to be a number of you doing this for the first time. So, whether you're coming back to Christ, having grown cold and drifted from Him, or if this is your first time, I want you to know that this step you've taken is the first step to new life. Those that are in there in your seat standing, you can pray this prayer with me also. I'm going to lead in prayer, and I want you to repeat this prayer after me. Look this way, if you will, please. Now, this prayer means nothing unless your heart is in it. Unless you say, I have sinned against God, and I have been living for myself, and I humble myself before Jesus, and I'm coming here, not just for a prayer, but I'm coming here to have my life changed. And this will be the opening of your heart. This is when you, the Bible says, Jesus stands at the door and knocks. And he was knocking while I was preaching, and you opened the door. So, just open up your heart to him now. He said, if you will confess your sins, you don't have to name them. You don't have to regret. Once you give them to him, you don't ever have to regret having done it. And we're going to pray that you invite him in. He said, if you open the door, I'll come, and I'll communicate with you. He said, I'll even eat with you. In other words, he said, I'll be a friend that was like sitting at a table and eating with you and talking with you. And you will be able, if you'll take advantage of what I'm telling you, you'll be able to talk to Jesus. You just talk to him. No fancy words, but you talk to him like as if you were sitting down talking to me or anyone else. Now, if you pray this, he said, if you confess your sins with your mouth and believe with your heart, you shall be saved. And if any man is in Christ Jesus by faith, becomes a new person. All things pass away. All things become new. Will you pray this with me? You keep your eyes open if you want. God, it doesn't matter if your eyes are open or closed. It's your heart. Pray with me, Jesus, thank you for calling me. Thank you for wooing me. Now, I want to come to you with all my sins. And everything that I have done that is unlike Christ, I confess. I confess my sins now. I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. And I ask now that Jesus Christ come into my heart and be the Lord of my life. And I will, by faith, believe that God will keep me from the power of Satan and give me the power of the Holy Spirit to live for God. Now, listen to me. There's another prayer. He said, if you ask, I'll give you the Holy Spirit. That's what you need to get away, not from just fit. I mean, to move on beyond your feelings so that you have something to work with now that when the enemy comes against you, you've got the shield. And the Holy Spirit will make Christ known to you. Pray this with me. Holy Spirit, you said you are given to all who ask. I ask you, Holy Spirit, to come now and live in me. Make yourself known to me. Comfort me. Reassure me. I thank you for changing me. I now live by faith. I now live by the Spirit. Will you give him thanks with your own words right out loud? Will you give him thanks?